"Sammy doesn't have that much to say about the girls. I get the impression he thinks how they're doing now is their husbands' business.
If they're doing okay, their husbands get the credit. If they're not doing okay then their husbands're to blame. Jeff is different.
Apparently sons, married or not, remain their fathers' responsibility.
Sam's very pleased with the way that Jeff turned out. I think this means he thinks he gets the credit. "Jeffs all right," Sam says,
"Jeffs doing very good. He's a hard-working kid and a good family man and I'm very proud of him. He started in fish and he did his job and worked hard and proved he was reliable, and so now he's in meat. That's a solid job to have and it's a good strong company he's got it with, too, the Big Y. In that business you're not gonna wake up some fine morning and find out you lost your job; people stopped buying what you sell. All a sudden what you were trained to do and've been doing all your life, for years and years, is now obsolete. You're outta work; there's nothing you can do. Terrifying, but it wont happen to Jeff; it can't. People'll always have to eat so they're always gonna need food.
What he's in is secure.
'"But Jeffs also got a growing family, four kids, and you know what that means: Gotta be thinking now about tuitions down the line, all that kind of thing. And I'm through that; I don't anymore. And I'm one of the few guys I know who when the time came, didn't get hit as hard as I expected we was gonna. I actually made out a little.
'"See, Jeff got outta Cathedral, he went the Navy. Now you did have tuition, Cathedral. It's a parochial school. But his mother wanted it, thought it was better, and so what the hell, I went along. This's something that she wants for the kid, might as well let him do it." But it wasn't very much, couple grand or so a year back then. Nothing compared to college, which'd been what I was getting ready for. But then he ended up not going. When he came out the service he said he was too old, go back to school, and besides, him and Carol wanted to get married. Start a family.
'"His mother was kind of disappointed, thought he should get his degree, but I supported him in that decision. Couldn't've done much else, said anything much against it not and been consistent, dropping out of AIC like I did. But also I agreed with him. I didn't think he needed it. I thought he could get along without it and if he didn't want to do it then he probably shouldn't he wouldn't get nothin' out of it. And on the basis of the way that things seem to've worked out, I think you'd have to say that both of us were right.
'"And then his two sisters. Well, Deb just did the two years to get her nurse's thing there; the associate degree. The bachelor's which was two more years, she didn't do 'til later and she paid for that herself. So it was just Marie Louise that actually went and stayed the whole entire four years. Not that that was not expensive, having her down New Rochelle there -Jesus, checks I used to write. But still, it wasn't that bad. Her being the only one of the three of them that really went, the whole four years. The way it worked out, me and Lois hadda pay for just the six years of college, not the twelve like wed been planning.
'"So okay, now I buy the tickets, Jeff and I go to the ballgame, and that's sort of my present to him. His coming to the games with me, that's his present to me."
"It's like it's some kind of a sacrament," Merrion said to Cavanaugh, 'going to the fucking ballgames. He exaggerates the meaning out of all proportion. Once he said to me that I must know what he was talking about, how much he gets out of it, because I probably did the same thing with my father, and I said Not really we only went once. Why, I couldn't tell you; it just wasn't a big deal for us. Sammy didn't know what to say. I hadda try to help him out.
'"Look," I said, "Pat was just never that much of a sports fan, is all.
He could talk sports with the customers and sound like he liked sports; he didn't mind them. He'd watch a game, TV. But going to the games, all that kind of thing? Didn't interest him. He was a nice guy and a good father and he took us fishing, me and Chris, the Connecticut shore, Long Island Sound. But only once or twice. I don't know what made him do it. He must've gotten the idea from someone at work, so when he got a day off, he took us and we rented the equipment and we fished. Caught something too, I remember. I forget exactly what. It was okay, but no regular thing. It was a pretty long drive.
